Goode Times Ahead
by con-notations
Summary: Percabeth goes to high school! After the Giant War, Percy and Annabeth still have senior year to complete. Join them as they make friends, enemies, and lots of memories.


**Chapter one**

* * *

**Rated T for mild cursing**

* * *

I sat on the kitchen counter at my boyfriend's apartment, watching him scramble around to get ready for school. I had already gotten ready, so I was just waiting for him. It was going to be my first day at Goode, and I was pretty excited. I'd finally be able to be near Mount Olympus, Camp Half-Blood, my friend Rachel, _and_ Percy, all at once. No more long car rides every time Olympus had a construction problem or I wanted to go on a date.

I lived with him and his mom and step-dad, Paul. Mrs. Jackson trusted me a lot, apparently, because she offered to let me sleep with Percy in his room, but I decided that that might not be the wisest choice. So, I slept on the couch, he slept in his room. I kept my stuff in his room, though. At first, it was pretty confusing, trying to figure out who's stuff was who's. I recalled that one time when he found my box of "feminine products." You'd have thought he'd never seen a tampon before.

"Socks... socks..." Percy was muttering, searching the living room desperately.

"On your feet, Seaweed Brain." I pointed out. He smiled at me sheepishly, pulling his sneakers on.

"What would I do without-_oh, Styx!_ It's seven thirty already?! We gotta go!"

I gasped, glancing at the stove clock behind me. Together, we raced to the apartment lobby, and ran down the block to the subway. Arriving at the station, we saw the subway car, the one that we were supposed to take to school, leave. It would be another five minutes before another one came.

Percy cursed. "I'm sorry, Annabeth. I didn't want you to be late on your first day." He looked so dejected, I put my arms around him and pecked him on the lips.

"It's alright. Things could be worse." Looking over his shoulder, I saw a prime example of just how things could be worse. A dracanea, a woman twin snake trunks for legs, was staring at us from twenty five yards away, looking at us like a starving child would regard a buffet.

"Dracanea, six o' clock." I whispered in his ear. He gave the slightest nod of the head.

"There's one behind you too." He whispered into my ear. Together, like we'd been fighting for years, (which we had) we went back to back, drawing our respective weapons. I took my Drakon-bone sword from my backpack, Percy activated Riptide, and we launched into action.

I swung at the dracanea, cutting her across the face. She snarled, and jumped towards me, claws out. Using her momentum, I skewered her straight through the sternum. She didn't stand a chance. I turned towards Percy, who was brushing sulfurous monster dust off of his shoes.

"Killed two monsters, and it's not even lunch yet." I said. Percy's face was stony. I guessed it was because of what had happened in Tartarus. When we were down there together, we were bombarded by a horde of _arai_, and they bestowed upon us all the curses from every monster we'd ever killed. Ever since we'd come back, Percy probably thought a lot more carefully about the ethics of killing monsters.

"It was us or them." I pointed out. "Self defense." But I wasn't so convinced myself. The dracanea were just standing there. For all I knew, they could have been just wanting to ride the subway. I shook my head. What was I thinking? They would have eaten us. The way they were standing there, it had seemed like an ambush… but maybe it wasn't. No, it probably was. Gods, what would people think if they could hear my thoughts? The great Annabeth Chase, going soft on monsters?

I didn't have to think about it much longer, because the subway car arrived. I grabbed Percy's hand, and we were on our way to school.

* * *

I was taking all AP core classes, engineering, and gym. I had persuaded Percy to take a few AP classes, and he was taking gym anyways, so we had four classes together total. My first period was AP English, which Percy would never have taken in a million years, so we parted ways as soon as the warning bell rang. He offered to walk me to my classroom, because he didn't care if he was late, but I didn't let him. He'd already jumped into Tartarus for me, I wasn't going to let him be late to class for me too.

I walked in, and regarded the teacher. She was a short, plump, older woman with obviously dyed red hair. She smiled at me.

"Is this our new student? Annabell Chase?" She asked.

"It's Annabeth, actually." I corrected, trying not to look too annoyed. People got my name wrong _a lot_. I would be correcting people constantly for the next few weeks.

"Annabeth." She nodded. "Class, I'd like to introduce you to our new student, Anna_beth _Chase. I'm Mrs. Kallinger. You may take a seat next to Cassandra here." She pointed to a girl with curly dirty-blond hair in the front row. "Cassandra! Can we _please_ not start this again!" I was alarmed for a moment at her intensity. Cassandra didn't seem to be doing anything wrong.

"You are out of dress code! Again!"

"Fine, write me up!" Cassandra cried. When she stood up, I saw her shorts, which were well above fingertip length. I also noticed her spaghetti-strapped tank top. _Slut_, I thought. She was probably some spoiled brat with daddy issues.

"I will." Mrs. Kallinger wrote her a pass, and Cassandra walked out of the room, heels clicking. I took my seat.

Mrs. Kallinger took a breath, and faced the class. "Alright class, take out your copies of Shakespeare and read through act one, scene three of Romeo and Juliet."

I didn't have all of my school books yet, so Mrs. Kallinger handed me a beat-up copy. Opening the book, I could swear my head was already starting to ache. As much as I loved to read, I still had dyslexia. Shakespeare was confusing enough as it was, but with d's and b's flipping themselves and u's and v's and i's and t's morphing into one another, it was even harder.

A few minutes later, Cassandra walked into the room with an ugly pair of Goode sweatpants on, looking extremely pissed off. She sat down in her desk, glaring at Mrs. Kallinger, who paid her student no attention as she handed out worksheets.

"You may work with your neighbor on these worksheets. They're due tomorrow at the beginning of class." Mrs. Kallinger announced.

Cassandra turned to me. "What were we supposed to read? I was busy being stripped of my rights." She scowled. "Hey, that's ironic. I was being stripped of my rights by having to put on more clothes. That's going on a poster."

I thought that that was a bit dramatic. "Stripped of your rights?"

"Yes, stripped of my rights."

"How were you_ stripped of your rights_?"

"Tell me, Annabell-"

"Anna_beth_."

"Anna_beth_, why is the dress code there?"

"To prevent distractions." At least, that's what all the teachers said when you asked them.

"Who is going to be distracted by shorts and a tank top?"

"Boys, mostly." I was starting to see where she was going with this.

"So why do I have to take time out of _my_ education, distracting _me_ and causing _me_ to miss content, so that _boys_ won't be distracted?"

"Yeah, I guess that is pretty stupid." I could see her point. School dress codes were placing a higher priority on boy's educations than girl's. But boys couldn't control whether they got distracted by girls, and girls could choose whether or not to break dress code.

"But boys don't get to choose whether or not to be distracted, and girls can choose what they wear."

"Can't boys just look away? They _can _choose whether or not to be distracted."

Now, that just made me mad. "As a girl with ADHD, I can honestly tell you that people don't choose whether or not to be distracted."

That made Cassandra silent long enough for me to write my name on top of the worksheet. Then she responded again.

"Okay, but, you're missing the point here. Would _girls_ have to be distracted and miss class time if the dress code wasn't like it is now? And does the dress code keep boys from being distracted anyways?"

"No, I guess not." She was right. With or without the dress code, boys would be distracted by girls, but without it, girls wouldn't be taken out of class for something as arbitrary as dress code. So the dress code was useless, and just another way for people to tell girls what to do. Then it struck me. _Oh, Styx! _I thought. I couldn't believe I had just fallen for it! My own _brother_ had invented it. "Did you just use the Socratic method on me?" I asked her.

She beamed at me. "Yup. I was in debate last year."

Wow. "You're good. Why didn't you do it this year?" I wondered.

"I wanted to focus on my singing."

"I want _you _to focus on the worksheet." Said Mrs. Kallinger from the back of the class. "Less chitchat, please." I wanted to roll my eyes. _Chitchat_?

"Also, there were like, sexist nerdy boys in debate. Bronies, Redditors, you know. _And_ they could debate, so it was hard to win arguments with them." She added in an undertone, pretending to work. I didn't really know what a Brony or a Redditor was, but I assumed they were sexist nerdy boys, like she'd said. The kind who would act like a know it all to you, but only because they assumed your were an airhead. Being blonde, I had to deal with that kind of attitude a lot.

I decided that Cassandra wasn't so bad. At first, I thought that she would be some stuck-up, snobby, slutty, spoiled brat who was used to getting her way, but now that I'd talked to her, I'd found out that she was very talented and passionate. I was just thinking about whether or not she'd be a good friend when she asked to see my schedule.

"Uh, sure." I fished it out of my bag and handed it to her.

She examined it for a moment. "Wow, you're taking all AP? That's going to be tough when exam season comes around."

"I know. I've been doing it since I was a freshman. It's even worse..." I was hesitant about talking about my dyslexia. It was one of my biggest struggles. Do people have any idea how annoying it was to like reading and be dyslexic? But I was making a resolution to be more open and accepting about it.

"Wait, why is it even worse?" She asked.

"Because I have dyslexia." I felt myself frown.

Her eyes widened. For a split second, I thought she was going to make fun of me, when she burst out: "Damn, girl! You must be like, a freaking genius. Anyways, we have most of our classes together, except for AP Math and Engineering. I've got Choir and regular Math, which is _not _my strongest subject." She laughed. "I barely passed last year. I was grounded for like, half of the summer." _Half of the summer? _I thought. Her parents must have been pretty harsh.

Then the bell rang, interrupting my thoughts. I was off to my next class, AP History.

* * *

**~A/N: Okay, so I've been reading a lot of these Percabeth-goes-to-high-school type fanfics, and I noticed that there was a lot of sexism and slut-shaming in them. I decided to make my own, with a more accurate representation of how school _actually_ is. Updates are going to be probably once a week or more, and _please _don't tell me to update in the reviews (_if_ you decide to review, of course.) It makes me not want to update because of expectations and all that. So yeah. Have a good day and stuff.~**


End file.
